Waterlogged (Jan. 11/09 - Singamata lodge near Semporna, Borneo, Malaysia)

After breakfast this morning, we decided to go for a snorkel in the 'natural aquarium' before heading out for our first dive. They've packed a crazy amount of fish in there, which at first glance was fine until I realized that they might be hungrier than your average reef fish. Ken went in first and stuck to the stairs leading down into the water, taking pictures of the abundant spadefish, a huge grouper, and a guitar shark resting under the stairs. I called him a wimp for not swimming out into the swarm of fish, and dove in. I got about 30 feet out and then felt something grab my foot. Turning around to give Ken crap for trying to creep me out, I realized that he was still back sitting on the steps and all that was behind me was a bunch of hungry fish! Stupid fish bit me on the toe! Needless to say, I was out of the water a few seconds later with no interest of going back in!

The calm sea made for a speedy and smooth ride out to Pulau Mabul, where villagers' houses crowded the shallow water on stilts and a beautiful resort sprawled out over the coral on the other side of the island. Our first dive was underneath the Sea Ventures platform, which basically looks like an old oil rig that has been converted to accommodate divers a few hundred meters offshore. Practical, but damn ugly. The flat bottom was about 45 feet down, and despite the poor visibility, there was lots to see. Large schools of jacks swirled above us, and reef fish ducked in and out of piles of debris. We found more colourful nudibranchs, three different types of moray eels, a huge crocodile fish, a scorpionfish, a blue spotted stingray, and FINALLY, completely camoflauged on a bright green fan coral, was a frogfish! Ken and I have over 2000 dives between us and neither one of us had ever seen one. These suckers are weird - big and lumpy, with fins shaped to mimic the contours of the coral, and big leg-like limbs underneath. They even have a translucent "fishing rod" sticking out of their head, which has a flesh-like chunk of skin attached that dangles in front of its face. When the frogfish is blended right in with his surroundings, he wiggles his baited fishing rod to attract prey and then gobble them up when they fall for it. Nature is so amazing!

For our second dive, we pulled up in front of the swanky over-water resort and dropped onto a series of jungle gym-like structures that had developed into artificial reefs. Tunicates, hard and soft corals, and invertibrates completely covered the beams, and the maze-like interior was swarming with large schools of jacks, smaller schools of spadefish and sweetlips, and lots of lone filefish, puffers, moorish idols, scorpionfish, trumpetrish... too many to name. We swam from one structure to another, past schools of little barracuda and the wooden hull of an upside down boat that had seen better days. We drifted past the beams, scanning for critters, and found pipefish, more fancy nudibranchs, another big crocodilefish, and a little slender filefish. Afterward, we pulled up to a dock and enjoyed some noodles for lunch and a pretty view out across the blue water to the hills where we came from this morning.

One last dive for the day was along a shallow natural reef a little farther south, where bright sunlight lit up the big coral heads, where a wide variety of creatures packed into every available surface. Highlights included another Pharaoh cuttlefish, spot-face moray eel, bright purple and orange nudibranchs, and several painted brightly with yellow, blue, and orange. Tiny porcelain crabs hid amongst the fingers of hard coral, seahorse-like pipefish drifted in the current, and yellow-eyed jawfish peered out of their burrows in the sand. It was over all too soon though - easy dives like this where there is 'critter overload' are so enjoyable that we could stay down there all day if we could. We surely swam right past dozens of unique little creatures that could be spotted if you took your time, but the variety and abundance of life we did se was very impressive for sure.

We sped back to the lodge over shallow reefs submerged under the high tide and unloaded the mountain of tanks and gear from the boat. We are loving it out here so much that we tried to stay another couple days, but it turns out that they're booked so full that there aren't enough tanks for us. So we'll stick to our original plan and head for the bus back to KK tomorrow morning. We'll just have to find paradise somewhere else down the road!